Imperial Hawk Class
A terrifying new Battleship designed to replace the already mighty War Eagle Class Dreadnought, the Imperial Hawk has yet to see combat except for a rumoured deployment in Klingon space as part of a fleet sent to support Melkor in the Ormong of 2291. Development The Garuda entered service in 2282, just in time to serve in the 4th Gorn-Romulan War. Immediately though, combat experience showed there were considerable problems with her design. The single Type H Plasma Torpedo Tube simply wasn't heavy enough armament for a Battlecruiser. Whilst her primary array of five Disruptor Cannons was formidable, extended use of these weapons was counter to the Alpha Strike, hit and fade tactics employed by the Romulan Star Navy, and she simply didn't have the shield strength or armour to slug it out with heavy Gorn warships. Production was halted, and the few ships in service used as command ships and kept away from heavy combat. The whole debacle left the RSN with an embarrassing problem. The largest and most powerful ships under their command were of Klingon origin; Romulan Capital Ships of a similar size were hopelessly out of date, and although the 4th Gorn-Romulan War had been a stalemate and white peace, the Star Navy was starting to look increasingly obsolete. War was coming, and the RSN desperately needed Capital Ships. In the short term, additional Condor Class Battleships helped to "plug the gap", but they were of Klingon design and not especially suited to Romulan battle tactics. Romulan warship designers had been toying with conceptual designs for a very large Bird of Prey type vessel since the 2250s, always finding that the lack of an efficient power source was the undoing of such a design. The adoption of M/AM Power in the 2270s finally gave these designs the power they needed. In such a large design, a huge M/AM reactor could be mounted, which would also solve the usual problem of insufficient power reserves for powerful Plasma Torpedo weaponry. As the design evolved, eventually three Plasma Torpedo Tubes became the preferred Secondary Weapons Array, with two mounted low down in the cavernous hull, and a third in the centre of a large prow just beneath the main bridge. The size of the design allowed her designers to simply scale everything up, with two warp nacelles of unprecedented size being connected to the main hull by an upper and lower wing, with a single massive impulse deck at the rear of the central hull. Surprisingly, the prototype was constructed and tested with little teething troubles, the ample space inside the ship lending itself to repairs whilst underway. The Organian Conflict had already begun, although the Star Empire managed to avoid being dragged in from the outset. Production of the first 3 vessels was completed in record time, and these mighty warships were to be the spearhead of the first Romulan offensive. The "Day of the Eagle" in 2286 marked the surprise entry of the Romulan Star Empire into the Organian Conflict. The War Eagle Class was the flagship of this invasion, with two leading the invasion into Federation space and the third stationed ready to deal with any Gorn counter-attacks. They proved enormously successful, being more powerful than anything Starfleet could muster against them. Whilst the RSE War Eagle herself was eventually overcome by a massed attack by Starfleet Destroyers and took heavy damage, she survived to limp back to Romulan space and proved that the design could take a punch as well as deal one. The War Eagle had 9 months of virtually unopposed dominance before Klingon and later Federation designs began to close the gap. She still proved a powerful asset however, and construction of new ships continued as long as time and resources allowed. During the War of Pacification, the War Eagle was one of the few ships able to stand against ISC Dreadnoughts. Romulan designers however had already began to develop her replacement. Designed as the largest of an ambitious design series (unimaginatively title the "New Series"), a new and even bigger Battleship had been proposed. Ordinarily, such an enormous vessel would be unable to cloak, her size prohibiting the raising and maintenance of a stable cloaking field. However, using cutting edge new materials and carefully shaped hull panels (similar to stealth aircraft of 20th Century Earth) combined with an overall planform designed for stealth and speed, the new Battleship could raise and sustain a cloaking field. The new warship was also designed with fleet combat, rather than lone wolf patrols, in mind. She was designed with a formidable Primary array of six Disruptor Cannons, and a truly staggering Secondary Weapons battery of four Heavy Plasma Torpedo Tubes. Power for the leviathan was provided by two warp cores, and propulsion came in the form of a large split impulse deck and no less than six warp nacelles, although two of these were as an aid to manoeuvrability at warp. Operational History The new ship entered service in extreme secrecy in 2291 as the Imperial Hawk Class. It is rumoured a single ship of the class was sighted as part of the fleet sent to aid Melkor in the Ormong of 2291. Her existence came as a complete surprise to Gorn forces during the General War of 2292, although the limited nature of Romulan involvement in the war limited the battles they participated in. Apocrypha After her involvement in the Praxis Incident of 2293 was revealed, the Romulan Star Empire began to once again withdraw behind her borders, withdrawing from galactic affairs again all together in the aftermath of the Tomed Incident in 2311. Even before this time, Romulan tactics had begun to turn away from fleet engagements and back to single "lone wolf" warships, now of a gargantuan size dwarfing the Crickets and Capsize Classes of old. Although the new Battleship had proven to be an extremely powerful fleet asset, she was less capable at long distance cruises than the War Eagle Class Dreadnought. Further more, experiments conducted in the field of alternative power sources had lead to the development of Artificial Quantum Singularities, and the cavernous hull and double winged design of the War Eagle leant itself to experiments with this form of power. The Imperial Hawk remained in service however as flagships until the 2330s with the RSE Imperivm Trivmphvs being the official Praetorial Barge well into the 2360s. Specifications * Class: 'Battleship * 'Hull Type Designation: '''RBB * '''Length: 763m * Crew: 680 * Warp Nacelles: '''6 * '''Maximum Sublight Speed: 2400 k/s (24 Mk/s) * Cruise Warp Factor Speed: wf 7.5 * Safe Maximum Warp Factor Speed: wf 8.6 * Hull Rating: '800 HSF * 'Shield Rating: 1025 FSP * Sensor Rating: 1000 SRU * Armament and Equipment: ** Primary *** 6 × Disruptor Cannon ** Secondary *** 4 × Type H Plasma Torpedo Tube ** Heavy *** None ** Advanced *** None ** Equipment *** Tractor Beam Emitter *** Romulan-Type Cloaking Device *** Tal Shiar Transporter Pad *** Probes Ships in Service (2292) RSE Imperial Hawk RSE Imperivm Trivmphvs RSE Remvs ex Triumphvs RSE Romvlvs ex Triumphvs RSE Romii ex Trivmphvs RSE Irascor RSE Atrocitas RSE Imperivm Aqvila RSE Annihilator RSE Star Storm Category:Romulan Vessels Category:Battleships